Cherry Will West's Jacobs headed to Hall of Fame

One way to measure Sam Jacobs' basketball career is by his own skilled and savvy work on the court.

Another is by his uncanny ability to lead otherwise pedestrian programs to unprecedented heights.

But perhaps the best is by the company he kept - especially among opponents.

Jacobs, a former Cherry Hill West and Cornell University star, will be inducted into the South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame on Feb. 15. It is a well-deserved recognition of a career marked by surprising team success as well as individual prowess.

"I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time," said Jacobs, who will be one of eight members of the Hall of Fame class of 2015 at the Al Carino Basketball Club of South Jersey's 35th annual induction ceremony.

Jacobs grew up in Cherry Hill. He played his first three seasons for Cherry Hill East but transferred across town to Cherry Hill West as a senior for the 1983 season.

Jacobs finished his career with 1,123 points and was a first-team all-South Jersey selection in his final scholastic season. But the caliber of his play is best reflected by the Lions' remarkable success in 1983, as the team went 25-4 and made a rare appearance in the South Jersey Group 4 title game.

Remember, that was an era when Camden - a Cherry Hill West and Cherry Hill East rival in both the old South Jersey North Conference as well as in South Jersey Group 4 competition - was a national power, with squads that would win four state titles between 1982 and '87.

Jacobs played during an era with some of the best teams and players in Camden history, including the 1981 squad that averaged 104 points and featured Milt Wagner and Billy Thompson, and the undefeated 1984 squad led by Kevin Walls.

"What was great was the level of competition, night in and night out," Jacobs said of his high school career. "It seemed like we always were playing a great game."

That 1983 Cherry Hill West squad lost in the South Jersey Group 4 final by a 55-49 score to an Atlantic City team led by Willie Glass, who would become a standout for a St. John's University team that made the NCAA Final Four in 1985 (beating eventual champion Villanova three times that season).

Atlantic City had beaten Camden, 66-65, in the sectional semifinals.

"We had a great team with some great guys that I'm still friendly with," Jacobs said of the Cherry Hill West squad that was coached by Don Murray and included top players such as Steve Injaian, Steve Wooling, and Eric Lee, among others.

If Jacobs took Cherry Hill West to another level, he went a step farther at Cornell. In his senior season in 1988, the Big Red won the first Ivy League title in the program's history and made the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1954.

From 1954 to 2008, Cornell made one NCAA tournament appearance and that was the season when the Big Red were led by the senior guard from Cherry Hill who was a first-team all-Ivy League selection as well as a three-time league player of the week.

What Jacobs remembers best about his final collegiate season is the caliber of competition, as Cornell played four teams in the Top 10, including Duke, North Carolina State, and Vanderbilt, which hosted the in-season event in which he would be named to the Music City Invitational all-tournament team.

Cornell was the No. 16 seed in the 1988 NCAA tournament. The Big Red traveled to Los Angeles to play in Pauley Pavilion in a first-round game against a top-seeded Arizona team that featured four future NBA players: Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr, Tom Tolbert, and Anthony Cook.

"That was such a great experience," Jacobs recalled of the team's 90-50 loss. "Just to go out there, play in Pauley Pavilion, be in the NCAA tournament, play against those Arizona guys. That's something I'll never forget."

Jacobs still lives in Cherry Hill with his wife and three children. He is a Cornell graduate, a law school graduate, and has his own insurance agency.

Jacobs still follows Cherry Hill and South Jersey basketball. He believes the sport played an instrumental part in his life.

"I learned a lot of life lessons playing basketball," Jacobs said. "I was fortunate, never got injured, played with a lot of great players, against a lot of great players. For me, being around basketball was a great thing."